SPELLING REFORM

FOREWORD

For some years now I've been amusing myself by planning exactly
what I would try in the way of “spelling reform” if I woke up
one morning and found that the Revolutionary
Stalinist–Linguist Party had mounted a coup and appointed me
as World Dictator. Details of my proposal for a Revolting
Orthography (modestly titled “Romanised English”) are unlikely
ever to become available; for now I want to get it clearly
established exactly how mad this scheme is. The problems
with our current system are sufficiently well known that I feel no
need to rehearse them all here; and people have been protesting
about the situation for centuries. So just what is wrong
with the idea of switching to something better?
Anti‐reformists come in thirteen basic flavours, with arguments
summarisable as follows.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #1
THE STATUS QUO FAN

The existing spelling system is traditional; if it was good enough
for my grandparents then it's good enough for everybody! I
refuse to learn any new system, whatever its supposed merits!

The normal reply by your run‐of‐the‐mill wimpish gradualist
reformer tends to be something along the lines of: Oh dear!
I'll have to try to persuade you it's a good thing. Well,
uh, look; the old style gives GH well over a dozen possible
pronunciations: BridGHam, CallaGHan, doGHouse, drouGHt,
EdinburGH, eiGHth, GHost, ginGHam, hiccouGH, houGH, HuGH,
KeiGHley, lonGHand, louGH, ouGHt, siGHt, touGH! The new
version is quicker, easier, more elegantly logical, and less cruel
to small children (or indeed the billions of adults apparently
doomed to learn English as a world language). Please try to
be a bit more open‐minded!

I on the other hand prefer the kind of reply that goes: Eat leaden
death, loathsome bourgeois counter‐revolutionary
running‐dogs! (Did I say giving me Absolute Power would
necessarily be a good thing?)

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #2
THE FONETICS PHREAK

Giving English a phonetic writing system, with one symbol for each
sound, would produce a range of ridiculous ill‐effects, such as
the following:

Compound sounds like “J” (which is phonetically “D” + “ZH”)
would have to be clumsily spelled out in full (so jay
becomes dzhey).

Trivial phonetic distinctions, as between the two kinds of “T”
in “Tea‐sTrainer”, or of “A” in “hAtbAnd”, would require
distinct spellings; and subtle dialectal vowel
distinctions – as between Glaswegian and Bronx
versions of “CAT” – would further confuse matters.

“Do you want to?” would have to be spelt the way it's
pronounced – as one word, dzhawonnuh?

The correct response to this argument, overlooked surprisingly
often by supposed experts, is: You [ʩǂ̼ʚ̃ʡ]wit! Who
said anything about a phonetic system? All we need
is one that's roughly graphemic (“one reading per
grapheme”) and preferably phonemic (“one spelling per
phoneme”) and/or morphemic (“one spelling per morpheme”).

[Terminological intermission – if you don't see what
the ‐eme words mean… well, you probably shouldn't be here, but
here's a quick summary:

Grapheme

the basic unit of orthography. Usually in alphabet‐based
writing systems equivalent to a letter; however, compound
graphemes made up of several parts (e.g. Å, Ĳ, Œ) are
also common and may count as separate items.

Phoneme

the basic unit of phonology. Each phoneme is not so much a
particular sound as a set of sounds conventionally grouped
together by a given language or dialect. Variations within
the set are disregarded; but distinctions between phonemes are
used to tell words apart (e.g. Tie, THigh, Die,
THy). Note that it is quite possible for a single
phoneme to be a “compound” of several sounds –
chow for instance may be analysed as just two phonemes,
the affricate ch = “T + SH” and the diphthong
ow = “AH + OO”.

Morpheme

the basic unit of morphology; a meaningful building‐block in
word‐construction, either to coin new dictionary words
(“derivation”, e.g. follow + –er =
follower) or just to modify them to suit their role in the
sentence (“inflection”, e.g. follow + –ed =
followed).

Got that? Well, never mind; time to read on.]

In such a system,

The compound phoneme /dʒ/, which functions as a unit
in the English sound system, can conveniently be spelt with the
letter J.

Phonetic variants of /æ/ or /t/ are no
concern of a well designed script; dialectal cases –
especially ones as inconsequential as the one quoted
above – are easy to handle (see below on
dialects).

If the individual words are pronounced in isolation as du, yu,
wont, tu, nothing is forcing us to put the reduced versions
in the dictionary (any more than we need to put glottal stops in
the alphabet).

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #3
THE HOMOPHONOPHOBE

If we spelled words as they're pronounced, confusion would reign
(or rain) since homophones like fisher/fissure,
minor/miner, two/to, and session/cession
would become indistinguishable.

Reply: These words already are indistinguishable when
spoken, but when did this fact last cause you any significant
inconvenience in a conversation? People naturally avoid
ambiguities in speech unless they're trying to contrive a pun, so
if you write as you would speak homophones are no problem.
Contrariwise, ambiguous spellings like bow, close, does, dove,
lead, live, minute, number, read, use, wind, wound currently
are a problem; and such misleading homographs (or do I
mean heterophones?) could be sorted out by the most moderate of
spelling reforms.

Besides, there will be plenty of slack in the system to
distinguish between fisher and fisyur, maynor
and mayner; and as for cession… what does it mean,
anyway? I'm not making these examples up, you know.

Other major world languages faced with the homophony problem have
found solutions such as the following:

Semantic radicals as in Chinese. Their logograms
generally have two parts, one hinting at the word's sound and the
other a clue to its meaning – rather as if we spelt
the preposition to as
²@. This is unworkable in an
alphabetic script, though numerals might make sentences such as
We won two to one too less confusing.

Differential capitalisation as in German, where
Morgen (“morning”) is a noun and
morgen (“tomorrow”) isn't. English
word‐classes are a bit chaotic for this, though it might help for
pronouns (to distinguish Iversuseye,
youversusyew and so on).

Stress marking as in Spanish: se is
unmarked where it means the grammatical reflexive pronoun
(“him/herself”), but the homophonous word for “I know” is treated
as more significant, and thus “stressed” as
sé. Compulsory diacritics like this would
probably be unpopular in English, but we might allow for them as
an optional extra (noversusnó)…

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #4
THE REMINGTON SALESMAN

Any phonemic script would need to provide distinct graphemes for
each of the forty or so phonemes of English, which means seriously
expanded typewriters! We'll need either ugly diacritics or
entirely novel letters – for instance, show (two
phonemes, /ʃ/ + /oʊ/) will have to become
something like šō!

Answer: At present almost every letter of the alphabet is severely
overstrained – it's “EY” as in beAuty, “BEE” as
in numB, “SEE” as in musCle, “DEE” as in
hanDkerchief, “EE” as in siEvEd, “EFF” as in
oF, “JEE” as in Gnomonic, “AITCH” as in Hour,
“EYE” as in busIness, “GEY” as in Jaeger, “CAY” as
in Knee, “ELL” as in couLd, “EM” as in
Mnemonic, “EN” as in damN, “OWE” as in
leOpard, “PEE” as in Pneumonic, “KEW” as in
Quay, “AHR” as in dossieR, “ESS” as in iSle,
“TEE” as in husTle, “YOO” as in bUild, “VEE” as in
Volkslied, “DOUBLEYOO” as in Wry, “ECKS” as in
rouX, “WIGH” as in mYrrh, “ZED” as in
capercailZie! But in a reform, what's to stop us
using two‐letter graphemes (as in sh ow)? That
way there are more than enough possibilities; we can even retire
Q, X, and our existing ugly diacritic, the
apostrophe! One new vowel symbol would be handy; I'd go for
Scandinavian‐style slashed O as in Bjørn.

But by the way, while we're addressing hypothetical typewriter
manufacturers, I'd better warn them that the old QWERTY keyboard
will be declared ungoodthinkful too. Its deliberately
unergonomic layout, designed to slow down common sequences on
early manual typewriters, is a thoroughly pointless legacy once
we're typing different common sequences on unjammable palmtop
keypads.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #5
THE CULTURE VULTURE

This revised spelling scheme looks completely alien to English
orthographic traditions. If schoolchildren are taught only
the new version, we'll lose touch with our literature; our
cultural heritage will be lost unless kids can read Shakespeare in
the original!

Normal reformers' reply: Aren't you overreacting a bit?
We'll phase it in slowly, so there's plenty of time to reprint the
classics – most of the editing required is simple
search‐and‐replace work. Compare the gradual process of
metrication. Other languages manage spelling reforms once a
generation; and the Japanese seem to be perfectly happy using
several very different writing systems in parallel!

My additional remarks: First – if, as is here conceded,
the old orthography looks so very unlike a reasonable one… why
stick with it? People complained about the jarring novelty
of electric lights, but I don't hear anyone these days campaigning
for a change back. Second – anyone caught using
pecks and bushels after the tenth anniversary of my glorious rule
will be branded on the forehead with the word idiot.
And third – trying to read Shakespeare “in the
original” is futile. As originally composed, it was…

Handwritten in an inconsistent style, not printed in the
modern standard orthography. Witness the following random
sample from “Henry VI Part 3” (III 91–92):
I am a ſubieƈt ﬁt to ieaﬅ withall, /
But farre vnﬁt to be a Soueraigne. And
remember, he never once spelt his name Shakespeare!

Designed to be declaimed with a thick sixteenth‐century accent:
“OY AHM UH SOOBJEK FIT TOE JAIST WI‐THAAL, BOOT FAR‐ROONFIT TOE
BEE UH SAWVA‐RAYN”. Anything else ruins it as poetry!
To contemporary listeners pass made a good rhyme
for was, and departure for
ſhorter; the author's name was more like
“SHEXPAIRR” than “SHEYKSPEEAH”.

Full of extinct grammatical features –
wherefore art thou Romeo? means “Why are you
(named) Romeo?”; liue thou, I liue means “if you
should live, I will live”; and knocke me at this
gate means “knock on the door for me”. On the
other hand, “It's being left on its own” would have sounded
utterly ungrammatical to Shakespeare.

Intended for an audience familiar with Elizabethan idioms,
topical references, and worldview – Divine Right of
Kings, the Four Humours, Jews as bogeymen, etc. Modern
performances ignore most of the puns and subtexts –
fortunately for his reputation.

In other words, the whole thing is unintelligible without either
an annotated translation, which might as well be in a reformed
spelling, or weeks of specialised training, which would be no more
worthwhile than teaching every child how to pilot a biplane.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #6
THE SPEED‐READER

Adult readers recognise whole words by their overall silhouettes,
not by decomposing them into the sounds. What's the point of
improving the correspondence of sounds and symbols? It'll
only mean we have to relearn the silhouettes! (And then of
course we'll have to go through the whole thing all over again the
next time the language changes…)

Reply: Actually, there are three skills involved in fluent
reading…

Word‐anticipation, guessing what will come next on the
basis of context. This is what speed‐reading really depends
on, and it's essentially independent of the writing system
involved.

Word‐recognition, treating words (or occasionally
syllables) as arbitrary units to be memorised. This can be
a useful skill once mastered, but a painful one to
acquire – ask any Japanese kid. The way the
current orthography forces learners to handle many common words
as unique arbitrary glyphs (doesn't one though?) is a
stumbling‐block many schoolchildren never really get over.

Word‐analysis, handling words as collections of
sounds. Even though English makes it unreliable, this is
the basic strategy for beginners, and still a constituent of any
truly literate adult's reading skills – does the word
squilliform give you any trouble? You may not
consciously spell out (e.g.) the word HANDBAG as
H A N D B A G, but if it was just a silhouette
you'd have to learn it separately from handbag or indeed
<Handbag> – look closely at
those letter shapes!

The upshot is that spelling reform might be briefly awkward for
word‐recognisers, but would eventually be an advantage even for
them – if only because it allows more hieroglyphs to
fit on a page! For children (and many, many adults), it
would be an enormous, immediate, and permanent improvement.
Or at least, as good as permanent; if the orthodox system can
outlive its best‐before date by half a millennium, we can leave
the next reform for Buck Rogers to worry
about.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #7
THE CROSSWORD‐PUZZLER

What about a spelling reform's incidental effects on word‐games,
abbreviations, and so on? If the dictionary contains more
Ks and Zs than Ds and Hs, the
scrabble‐players are going to riot!

Reply: Ah, yes, a much more intelligent point. (Okay, I
admit it, this one's a plant; I've never seen it considered
anywhere else, but I thought it deserved an airing.)
Scrabble‐players will have to decide whether to play “historical”
or “recalibrated” Scrabble; the rest of us will just have to get
used to the idea that the E.U. is the Y(uropian)
Y(union), K.O.s are N(ok)‐A(wt)z, the
C.I.A. is the S(entral) I(ntelijens) E(yjensi), and
a G.H.Q. is a J(eneral) H(ed)‐K(worterz)!
A.I.D.S. may still be A.I.D.S., but this is no
longer the same as the word eydz; and since any serious
reform would also change the names of the letters, even
the unaltered initialisms may be hard to recognise in speech:
A.I. for instance becomes “AH EE”. If you think
that's confusing, count yourself lucky I'm not reforming the
Phoenician‐derived alphabetical order!

Come to think of it, I.D., O.K., and many others
(especially tradenames) are already anomalies, not standing for
any particular real series of English words; and acronyms such as
laser, quango, or ufo are effectively
independent of their original forms too. Do we make it
aydi, leyzer or I.D., L.A.S.I.R.? And as for
G.N.U. (“GNU's Not Unix”)… I don't particularly care what
happens in these cases; but the marketing director of
I.C.I. might.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #8
THE FRENCH TEACHER

The orthodox system, which spells qualifications,
joints, and changes exactly as French does, is very
useful for those who know French and want to learn English, or
vice versa. Changing the spellings to, say,
kwolifikeysyonz, joyntz, ceynjiz will make polyglottism
even rarer!

Reply: True, our Norman‐influenced orthography is a bridge between
English and French. But why force everyone to learn it as
the only spelling system for English? Most Asian
(or even Scandinavian) learners of English care little for French;
and Texans would be better off with a bridge towards
Spanish. Personally, I would have been happy to learn a bit
about Anglo‐Norman during my years as a French student, but nobody
wanted to tell me anything about it then!

There are three main problems with spelling English as
Anglo‐Norman:

Mediaeval French isn't Modern French. The three
examples above used to be pronounced roughly as spelt
(“QUA‐LEAFY‐CATSY‐ONS, DZHO‐INTS, TSHAN‐DZHES”), but nowadays
they're barely recognisable (“KALI‐FEEKASS‐YAWNG, ZHWENG,
SHAHNGZH”). French could do with a new broom of its
own – I'd suggest kalifikasionz, jwentz,
xanjhz!

Mediaeval English isn't Modern English. The biggest
change is the Great Vowel Shift, which is responsible for our
pronunciation of A, E, I, O, U as “EH EE EYE OWE EWE” (as
in no other writing system on the planet), rather than
approximately “AH EH EE OH OO” (as in Old English, Finnish,
Latin, Indonesian, Swahili… etc.). The first hurdle for
language teachers is usually to persuade pupils that (e.g.)
dei is “DAY‐EE” not “DEE‐EYE”; a spelling reform
that made English less insular would be a great help here.

Mediaeval French never was Mediaeval English.
Applying Romance orthographic prejudices to a Germanic language
just caused trouble from the start – witness the
Norman scribes' use of:

Cosmetic O in place of U in cOme, lOve, sOup,
tOngue, and many others where a U would be awkward
in clerical handwriting (too many consecutive vertical
strokes).

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #9
THE BON‐MOT AFICIONADO

English is full of vocabulary items borrowed from other
languages – some fully naturalised, some just temporary
visitors. This is largely because its anything‐goes attitude
to spelling places no restrictions on words like
cinquecento, Fraulein, or connoisseur.
If we reform these their sources will become unrecognisable!
Besides, what are we going to do with names like Einstein,
Munich, or Caesar (and come to that, Rye)?

Reply: English is hospitable to immigrant words because it has
simple morphology, rich phonology, and a cosmopolitan
tradition. Spelling is irrelevant – witness the
words fatwa, glasnost, and futon, taken from
languages that don't even spell them in the same writing system as
we do! My policy on imports would be:

Words that retain foreign citizenship are immune to English
spelling rules, and are spelt as the source language prefers, but
italicised to alert naïve readers to the fact that (for instance)
Fräulein isn't pronounced “FRAWLEEN”. They
may not be able to guess how it is pronounced, but that
problem will if anything be reduced by the reform.

Some imports may have debatable transcriptions, either because of
changes back home (for instance,
Neanderthal lost its
silent H in German a century ago) or doubt about the best
romanisation (Koran or
Qurʾān? Shintō or
Sintoo?). Never mind.

Words which have made English their permanent home must conform
to its rules. If there really is such a word as
connoisseur, it's an English one with no special right to
a funny spelling – the French say
connaisseur. The same applies one way or
another to the mock‐French spellings of all the words and phrases
in the following list: blancmange, bon viveur, double
entendre, épergne, forté, locale, morale, nom‐de‐plume,
papier‐mâché, rationale, resumé, table d'hôte.

Foreign‐language placenames can ignore the reform, but many
places have English names independent of the forms used by their
inhabitants. Spain, Munich, Peking are English
words, and so get reformed (Speyn, Myunik, Piykinh) no
matter what the locals call them.

Many terms from classical languages (alias, Hades, nisi,
Julius Caesar) have acquired “anglicised”
pronunciations. These are genuinely problematic; should
they be respelt (Juwlius Siyzar), or even repronounced
(“YULI‐OOS KY‐SAR”)? And come to that, the Shakespearean
play was The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæſar, originally
pronounced “JOOH‐LEE‐OOS SAY‐ZAR”! Fortunately, some
shortcuts can be taken; archaisms can be treated as foreignisms.

Personal names are rather like historical spellings in that your
birth certificate may be regarded as definitive; Mr Geoffrey
Ewan Quinn won't necessarily have to re‐monogram all his
possessions as the property of Mr Jefri Yuan Kwin.
However, new names should be spelt sanely; and anyone
who wants to avoid constantly telling people “Well, okay, it's
pronounced FANSHAW but it's spelt
Featherstonehaugh” should switch. I for one
would be perfectly happy to become a romanised Ray.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #10
THE ETYMOLOGICAL DETERMINIST

Spelling wrestling as we do is a useful guide to the word's
provenance. In its Old English form the word was indeed
pronounced with an audible “W”, “T”, and “G”. If we change
our spelling we'll lose all these clues!

Reply: If etymology is a sufficiently important subject that
primary school children are forced to master a Mediaeval
Reenactment writing system on this basis, why are those children
never actually taught even the basics of linguistic
history? Surely any kid who has gone to the trouble of
learning an etymological spelling for wrestling (etc.)
should be entitled to go on and take the subject at GCSE
level! But somehow I suspect that most people find etymology
supremely unimportant in their lives… If anyone ever
needs to know the origin of the word reslinh,
there will still be dictionaries about. Come to that, they
will be easier to use (you can find the word under R) and
have more room for etymologies (as they need less room for
pronunciation guides)!

Besides, why stop at Old English? Why not write everything
in Proto‐Indo‐European? English spelling is much less help
as a guide to lexical history than it would be if anyone cared,
featuring as it does…

Double Standards – inconsistent cut‐off points
for retaining silent letters. My favourite example is the
homophonophobes' reign/rain.
These spellings might seem to imply that reign, unlike
rain, was until recently pronounced “REAGAN”.
However, a millennium or so ago, reign was a Latinate word
pronounced “REH‐NYUH” (with no “G”); rain was a Germanic
word pronounced “REGHN” (with a definite “G”).

I'm not saying we should necessarily wipe out such etymological
traces as the specific unstressed vowels in
inter­administrative or even the Greek PHs in
philosopher (which can all convey useful
morphological information); just that
etymology isn't one of an orthography's main concerns.

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #11
THE COCKNEY PATRIOT

The trouble with a more phonologically representative spelling
system is that it would reveal the nonstandard ways dialect
speakers interpret the graphemes of written English.
Tutor for instance is “TOODUR” to a Nebraskan, “TEWTRR” to
an Aberdonian, and “CHOO'AH” to a Cockney; woe betide any speaker
of BBC English who tries to impose some lah‐di‐dah “standard
spelling dialect” on the inhabitants of the East End!

Reply: At last we're getting to the non‐trivial arguments!
Yes, there's an important problem here that the system has to deal
with carefully. But its nature is still obscured by several
layers of misunderstanding, which I'll try to handle quickly:

Who said I'd send out “dialect police” to arrest persistent
aitch‐droppers? This is a spelling reform, not a
speaking reform! Besides, if it's only the
pronunciation we're talking about (rather than grammar), the
approved linguistics jargon is “accent”, not “dialect”.

As things stand, everyone is forced to learn a “standard spelling
accent” that has been dead for centuries. At least becoming
bilingual in Cockney and BBC English might be useful…

Why assume the spelling accent would be a posh one? It
would have to be a sort of artificial “Highest Common Factor”
archi‐phonology everyone could agree on.

There are four basic ways in which accents can vary:

Phonetic (or “realisational”) variation. Trifling
but obvious features like the way Cockneys pronounce bay
almost as “BUY” (while buy becomes more like “BOY” and
boy like “BOOY”). Cockneys have no trouble
distinguishing them and lining them up correctly with the written
forms, so this is irrelevant to the orthography.

Phonemic (or “systemic”) variation. Added or lost
distinctions, such as between “TH” and “F” (Cockneys pronounce
thin the same as fin). If the spelling system
makes more distinctions than you do, you can ignore them while
reading, and your difficulties in learning to write will be
nothing new or serious (“Hmm, is it spelled theft or
feft?”). On the other hand if it makes
fewer distinctions you'll have serious trouble reading
(“Hmm, does it mean THREE or FREE?”). The lesson I draw
from this is that the spelling system should make all the
available phonemic distinctions – and not just the
ones the Queen makes.

Phonotactic (or “distributional”) variation. This is
variation dependent on the phonetic context, like the way
Cockneys – and in fact the English
generally – drop any “R” sound that isn't followed by
a vowel (so that “LARDER” = “LADA”). Again, the orthography
should side with those who keep the distinctions clear, which in
this case means spelling a lot of words with an R omitted
by BBC newsreaders.

Lexical (or “selectional”) variation. Disputed
idiomatic cases such as “GRASS/GRAASS” or “DOSSLE/DOHCYLE”.
Where these are real regional standards rather than merely
outbreaks of “spelling‐pronunciation” (like saying “CUP‐BOARD”
for “KUBBERD”), they have as much right to be tolerated as
alternative spellings as they have to be tolerated as alternative
pronunciations. Obviously, you ought to be consistent, but
if your recipes refer to tomeyto they will communicate at
least as effectively as if you “standardised” it to
tomahto.

In summary, then… as long as people understand the ways accents
vary (a body of knowledge which will clearly be one of the main
influences on the system's rules, but which any Cockney already
needs for communication with non‐Cockneys), there is no reason to
imagine that there are any insurmountable problems
here – how many of the people who claim that creating a
pandialectal scheme is impossible have ever even tried?

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #12
THE MORPHOPHONOLOGOSTER

A purely phonemic system (obeying the principle of One Spelling
Per Phoneme) would often mean giving divergent spellings to
different forms of a single morpheme, concealing relationships
between words in contexts such as…

cats and dogs, which would have to become
katS and dogZ, with two different plural markers;

One of the few merits of the old style is that it makes obvious
the connection between nation and national, which
will be disguised if they're respelt neyshn and
nashønal.

Reply: Absolutely – the morphemic principle (One
Spelling Per Morpheme) conflicts with the phonemic system and is
worth making concessions over. Affixes that still work as
productive processes, like plural ‐s or past tense
‐ed, should be given consistent single spellings
wherever possible (including words such as pianos/potatoEs,
publicly/cyclicALly, wiry/fiEry where the conventional
spellings are flagrant breaches of this principle).
Likewise, compromises can be found for the stress‐shift and
consonant‐softening cases, though there is room for debate about
how far it should be allowed to complicate things…

Foreign languages – even those with exemplary
orthographies – flout this principle all the
time. Portuguese doesn't exactly signpost the link between
nação and nacional –
and Welsh doesn't even enforce stable initial letters: “nation”
is cenedl, but “in a nation” is yng
nghenedl!

Stress‐shift is troublesome only if the unstressed “schwa” sound
is treated as a phoneme in its own right needing to be uniformly
represented with a special unique symbol. But accents vary
widely in where they use schwas – for instance mine
keeps the “I”‐sounds in bIzarre, pidgIn distinct from the
schwa‐sounds of bAzaar, pidgeOn (a distinction rarely
allowed for in US spelling reform proposals). It makes more
sense to write unstressed syllables with the normal range of
vowel symbols, and rely on the reader to apply appropriate
schwaing rules.

While I'd be happy to compromise on fuSion and its many
relatives, which are easy to accommodate, I am unconvinced by the
idea of special treatment for “softening” C and
G. Are they really live phonological
processes? The suffix ‐ic hardly deserves a special
spelling rule of its own to cover “IKAL/ISSITY”!

Vowel‐shifted doublets in particular need no special
privileges. With so many cases – I could also
quote natural/nAture, recess/recEde, senility/senIle,
conical/cOne, humble/hUmility – it should be
self‐evident no matter how we spell it that (e.g.) “short IH” is
often related to “long EYE”. It would be a step forward if
English‐speakers recognised this explicitly, rather than just
vaguely taking the two sounds to be “the same thing”.

Where do we stop? There are plenty of morphemic links that
are concealed by the Anglo‐Norman orthography.
Should we insert rules into the spelling system to connect
abound/abundant, destroy/destruction, fool/folly,
join/junction, ordain/ordination, receive/reception,
solve/solution, voice/vocal, and all the crypto‐doublets
quoted in the etymology section?

OPPONENTS OF REFORM: #13
THE POLITICIAN

All this talk is pointless. The anglophone nations are too
lazy, ignorant, and superstitious; even if you were world
dictator, you'd never get them to cooperate on a project that
involved this much work and was this insulting to all their
ludicrous national traditions. Americans think any attack on
their honor is un‐American, Brits are still stuck in the
Middle Ages, and Australians of course think literacy's for
poofs… Besides, none of them can think straight about
phonological issues, largely because their brains are hopelessly
clogged with Anglo‐Norman delusions.

Reply: Well, I'm certainly glad I didn't say that…

Imagine the heartaches /
Of diplomatic attaches /
When the wind detaches /
Their false moustaches

AFTERWORD

In case you're wondering, no, I don't believe that this sort of
wholesale spelling reform would be a workable
proposition, but I'm so sick of watching Aunt Sally reform
proposals being pelted with ridiculously inadequate arguments that
I thought it would make a nice change if I wrote something equally
biassed and unfair in the other direction… So don't expect
me to provide a Mailbox like the one on my
anti‐Esperanto page! The flaws of the
standard orthography are indefensible – but it has an
extensive Installed User Base, and can thus afford to ignore
criticism in exactly the same manner as Fahrenheit thermometers,
QWERTY keyboards, and certain software packages, which can all
rely on conformism, short‐termism, and sheer laziness for their
continued survival.